Trump Will Be President Forever

Got that? They do not want white heterosexual males to apply (unless you’re a transgendered male). Note the “they/them/theirs” at the bottom.

Doesn’t matter if you have the tech skills to help the Democrats win elections. If you’re a cisgendered straight white male, your application goes to the bottom of the pile. Brilliant, just brilliant.

The thing that just slays me about liberals like this is that they have no clue whatsoever that this kind of discrimination is immoral and offensive. This stuff is not new. I was told in 1997 by a newspaper that initially welcomed my job application that my CV was put in limbo because the publisher decided that he didn’t want a white male in that job, unless they couldn’t find anybody as qualified as me. After a national job search that lasted several months, their search was fruitless, and they said they would now like to bring me in for a job interview. By then, I had just taken a job in NYC, and was on my way to a different life.

I’m glad things worked out the way they did for me, but man, did that experience ever stay with me. It impressed upon me the injustice of the days when prejudice kept women and minorities for being considered fairly for jobs. That was unjust. But you don’t make up for one injustice by perpetrating another. That’s what the (white, male) liberal publisher of that newspaper was trying to do. And I’m sure he thought of himself as a virtuous man.

This mentality exemplified by Madeleine Leader has a lot to do with why, at the end of the day, I’ll end up voting Republican out of pure self-protection, and to protect the job prospects of my children, especially my sons. Good job, Democrats. You are telling straight white people that they are second-class citizens who don’t deserve fairness. You’ll continue to find self-hating liberal whites who are willing to accept this garbage, but many more aren’t falling for it — and know what kind of world Democrats are preparing for them when and if they take power again.

As a registered Independent whose economic and foreign policy views are to the left of the average Republican’s, I would love to have the chance to consider voting Democratic in a national election, especially with the GOP in such a mess. But out of self-protection, I can’t take that chance.

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164 Responses to Trump Will Be President Forever

If the e-mail is not a fake, then shame on the Dems for two reasons. First, we need to be the party for all comers, not only those who are woke. Of course, we won’t necessarily agree with everything our fellow Democrats say or represent, but that is life in the big city (and small town). Surely we can handle this type of diversity for the common good, the golden thread that should bind us together. Second, how stupid do you have to be to put something like this in an e-mail? That level of political insensitivity should not be tolerated by a political organization in this hypersensitive age. Every person working to promote the Democrat’s cause should vet every communication through the lens of Fox news and right-wing radio, because they are looking for things like this to make us look silly and out of touch with people who used to be Democrats. Good grief!

how many of the commenters here are equally outraged at colleges and universities that have quotas for in-state students and preferential admissions for “legacy” applicants (children of alumni)

State universities should favor state residents, as their parents pay for the universities through taxes, and the state schools’ very purpose is the education of state residents. You might as well ask why K-12 school districts only serve district resident children.

As for legacies, if you mean private institutions, that’s their business, as they are dependent on alumni donations, and alumni won’t donate if their kids get turned away.

how many here believe veterans should be given preferential treatment in the hiring process (common in some jobs)?

That’s a reward for service, not identity — what you have done, not what you are. Veterans also often have skills and experience which are difficult to find among non-vet applicants, especially at younger ages.

The point I was making earlier was not that “Hey, there are these other forms of discrimination that people should be up arms about, so spread the outrage around a little.” Instead, it was that a reminder that there are in fact types of discrimination in many selection processes that most people consider unexceptionable. Raw individual ability to is a job is important. It shouldn’t ever be disregarded in the hiring process. It’s not always the only factor to keep in mind.

Thank you. We often hear a certain contempt or derision that those who are “privileged” only relate to the experience of the marginalized or oppressed once they themselves are the target.

Of course, on the other hand, one might see it as open-mindedness, as humility – to let life lessons affect us in an outwardly-focused way. But no: reacting to experience by thinking of others actually is a *lack* of empathy, the all-knowing “ascendants” will say. Narcissism, entitlement.

I confess I can talk that talk, and will admit to participating in that sentiment, even while fully realizing that I myself fit into a demographic of “privilege” – but that’s a given, isn’t it? The irony. The privileged few, telling others to check their privilege. Others whom in their profound wisdom they presume to know.

Such is the moral force of identity politics. A force which, again, full disclosure, held a certain logic, a sense of justice for me.

But the damaging, effacing, dehumanizing aspect to the identity lens finally hit home. Why? Because it happened to me.

I recently went through an elaborate application process for a position which by all accounts I was over-qualified, where I would have been a massive asset substantively, a shiny object optically. I had my own reasons for applying – electing to earn less pay at a job with less stature. Chief among my reasons: I believed in what I would be doing; I had prepared for it; I knew the area as only a handful did, with a hard-earned assessment of what I could contribute.

Of course sprawling technocratic entities – governments, corporations, universities – that ostensibly trade in competence paradoxically don’t care at all about competence. They care about projecting and promoting gauzy utopias. The promise of eternal progress. Self-congratulatory altars to their own cleverness, their own greatness.

So, back to my story – I made it onto a short list of candidates that I later would discover were patently less qualified. I’m not saying that to self-aggrandize, but to frame my disillusionment.

During the process, I avoided but finally was pressed to submit a statement on “how I would support and contribute to diversity.” At first I thought lightly, “ah, ok, fine, I know this the game.” But when I had to put pen to paper, I became deeply angry. Sure, I can trot out metrics or stereotypes or platitudes. I just happen to fall on the “correct” side of some (though not all) of the virtue lines. I could spin a yarn.

But it made me hate them for it. My character, grit, motivation, and achievement – apparently not all that important. What mattered was that I conjure an artificial narrative identifying ways I faced “institutional” or “systemic” oppression – a narrative I can’t personally relate to at all, but which I was being forced to voice as my own, personally; to confess a fiction as personal truth. It didn’t need to be true, the test was to show I get it.

I burned, and still burn, at being required to submit to terms I find stupid, myopic, counterproductive. I reject this to my core. Of course I do, I’m American.

First, I will state that yes, it appears as though the story was confirmed. So no, it isn’t fake news.

Now, I don’t know if Rod confirmed the story before posting or not. If he did confirm it, great, that’s what good journalists do.

But if he didn’t confirm it, he posted it incautiously. The fact that it later turned out to be true does not alter that.

But I would add this as well: Rod apparently thinks it’s in his own self-interest to vote Republican if some Democratic staffer encourages illegal discrimination…even though the senior party leadership denounces it.

Rod may be sincere in this action, but it does smell a bit like double standards. The party’s swift denouncing of this email isn’t good enough…but DJT’s foot-dragging denouncing of white spuremists is just ducky? That, on the balance, because DJT supports your tribe, it’s ok to support his insane economic policies, intentionally ignorant views on climate change, childish rants against Iran, North Korea, and even our own allies?

I mean, seriously…what is more important: that a low-level bigot (who has been denounced by her leadership) exists, or that we are risking a nuclear showdown? Are you sure you have your priorities straight?

Even if my face has made life uncomfortable for me, I think I’ll keep my nose.

Madeleine Leader needs to be fired. The DNC seems to be in serious disarray, which is dismaying. That new Tech chief they hired away from Uber should read the riot act to his staff; focusing on cyber security should not come at the expense of basic good sense and downright illegal behavior.

Oh, one last thing occurred to me today I figured I should throw out in the comment section. It seems to have passed mostly without question in these comments that in the US IT world, straight white males are the default, the overwhelming majority. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that in many locales around the country this might be true. So in those areas, straight white male applicants would be representative of the majority of the local work culture.

However, I am not at all sure this is true nationwide. I work at the fringes of IT, although I am not IT myself (parts of my job involve website content updates and computer hardware and software orders), so I work with IT staff on a fairly regular basis. I have literally no idea what the sexual orientation of any of the people in the IT suite in my large office building might be (it doesn’t come up in casual conversation), but on both the tech and the data side white males are definitely a distinct minority. On the tech and website software side they do make up roughly the same numbers as the total of females of all races (perhaps 20% of the whole). The strong majority of tech and website IT people at my workplace are nonwhite males, mostly East Indian and various Asian ethnicities plus a few Hispanics. On the data side, it’s slightly different, but there the imbalance is gender-based. Most of our data people are women.

The DNC is an organization with a national reach. It is at least conceivable that this DNC staffer had noted that previous hiring decisions were tipped toward monoculture. Of course, even if that were the case, I’d guess many posters here would still feel that new hires should be judged (fairly) on a purely case-by-case basis, but in my experience that isn’t the way HR and legal counsel tends to think. They worry about lawsuits regarding unfair hiring practices.

His childish rants vs. Clintons childish setting of the Middle East on fire? Rants are certainly less damaging.

If he is limited to rants, possibly. But his bombing in Syria, continued sending troops to Iraq and Africa, continual rhetoric against Iran–I very much doubt if one can argue he’s just ranting. Ripping up nuclear deals, against the wishes of our allies (except for Israel and KSA)…these are not mere rants.